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Nine-score-and-one years ago, as Abraham Lincoln would put it, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The ideas of liberty and equality, expressed so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are the very foundation stones of American citizenship.

We move in equalitarian directions; the distribution of income flattens out; the floor beneath the poorest paid and least secure is raised and made more substantial. Since the demise of Newport and Tuxedo Park, the very rich have shunned ostentatious display. The equality of opportunity, the chance to rise in the world is at least as great today as it was thirty years ago. The likelihood of declining status is less. Where does the energy for this movement come from? Who is behind it?Since 1848, it has been assumed that the drive for a more equalitarian society, its effective social force, would come from the stratum of society with the most to gain, the working classes. This was thought to be the revolutionary force in the world—the demand of workers for a classless society sparked by their hostility to the owning classes. It was to be the elite among the workers, not the lumpenproletariat, not the "scum," who were to advance this movement. Just as "liberty" was the central slogan of the bourgeois revolution, so "equality" was the central concept in the working class movement. Hence it was natural to assume that whatever gains have been made in equalizing the income and status of men in our society came about largely from working class pressure.

Based on 'depth' interviews with a random sample of 15 Wc & LMc men in an Eastern US city, this article reports their att's & beliefs regarding their own status & the general question of soc equality. It is found that R's have elaborated a series of rationalized beliefs which account for their status & the status of those above & below them. These are generally conservative in their implications & lead these men to fear the threat to their ideas, life strategies & goals which equalitarianism implies. These men are interested in opportunity for themselves, not equality of opportunity; the more they believe in the presence of opportunity, the more scornful they are of the Lc's. The 2 greatest ideals of democracy, `freedom' & `equality', are advanced only accidentally by the business & Wc's-they survive as ideals chiefly in the professional class. Modified AA-IPSA.